Facsimile transmission is a widely used method of personal and business communication. The facsimile communication process advantageously allows messages, documents and images to be transmitted between remotely located senders and recipients.
Facsimile machines traditionally operate by measuring and recording the light and dark areas (in the form of pixels) on a hard copy of a document with an optical scanner. These light and dark areas are processed into a binary image file and then compressed for transmission by one of a variety of source encoding techniques using source compression algorithms. The digital representation of the document image is then typically transmitted over the public switched telephone network (PSTN) using a voice-band modem, the modem converting the digital files into analog signals capable of traveling over phone lines. At the receiving end, a modem associated with a receiving facsimile machine reconverts the analog signal back into a digital file, whereupon the digital file is decompressed into the original binary file format. The receiving facsimile machine then translates the binary file into an image that can be printed by the receiving facsimile machine.
Alternatively, a computer may operate as a “fax machine” by employing special translation software that converts a document from and to a facsimile transmission format. Using a modem and a PSTN for transmission, users at properly configured computers can send and receive facsimile images.
With respect to conventional facsimile machines (and computer-based faxing), the receiving machine may be unavailable if turned off or if the telephone line to which it is attached is busy. Additionally, images may be garbled or otherwise corrupted in transmission by telephone line problems or by paper jams in the receiving facsimile machine. Also, long distance connections between transmitting facsimile machines often require expensive communication charges. Finally, many users only have limited access to facsimile machines, as many households do not have a facsimile machine and many businesses typically only have a single facsimile machine. Thus, facsimile transmission between conventional facsimile machines is not optimized in terms of accuracy of message transmission and convenience of use.
Recently, facsimile machines have been developed which are e-mail enabled, thus offering alternative methods for sending and receiving images scanned by a facsimile machine.
In the new breed of Internet facsimile machines, certain of the features of e-mail and faxing are advantageously combined. Internet facsimile machines are configured to be installed in a local area network (LAN), where the Internet facsimile machines are assigned an e-mail address and function as network devices. Generally, Internet facsimile machines work by scanning a document image into a binary file, and then packaging the data as attachments to an e-mail to be sent to a specified e-mail address in the manner previously described. The specified e-mail address may be the address of a computer user or may be the address of another Internet facsimile machine. In either case, the received attachment of the e-mail can be opened, viewed, forwarded, printed and the like. Exemplary Internet facsimile machines include the Okifax® 5950 series, available from Oki Data Americas, Inc., the Panasonic DX-2000, available from Panasonic, Inc., and the HP Digital Sender 8100C, available from Hewlett Packard, Inc. Most Internet facsimile machines are also configured for sending facsimile messages in a conventional manner over a PSTN.
In a further hybrid of conventional e-mail and facsimile techniques, a large number of companies now provide fax-to-e-mail or e-mail-to-fax services. Persons subscribing to such services are typically provided with a unique telephone number and an e-mail account that serve as proxies for receiving and sending faxes. The telephone number may be a local phone number, a long distance number, a toll-free number, or the like, which may be published or otherwise provided by a subscriber to the service. Using the fax-to-e-mail service, a conventional dial-up facsimile machine may send analog transmissions through the PSTN to the subscriber's unique phone number associated with the service. Upon receipt of the facsimile transmission at the service, the facsimile transmission is converted to a digital file, compressed (usually to a Tagged Image File Format (TIFF)), and associated with the subscriber's e-mail address as an attachment to a service-generated e-mail. The resulting e-mail is then automatically forwarded over the Internet, typically via Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), directly to the subscriber's e-mail inbox. The subscriber may then retrieve the e-mail like any other e-mail message on the subscriber's computer workstation. To open the retrieved e-mail and view the contents, an image viewer compatible with the format of the transmitted file is required.
Facsimile messages received in the traditional manners herein described are usually viewed once and printed or otherwise converted to a hardcopy format. Archival copies, if made, are usually kept as paper copies and are only reproduced by traditional copying methods. Heretofore, no common storage system for saving and re-using facsimile messages has been developed.
While fax-to-e-mail services provide great flexibility in that subscribers can receive a facsimile transmission at any time and at any place by simply logging into their e-mail account from a personal computer, methods have not yet been developed for sharing such facsimiles across multiple platforms. More particularly, facsimile and image-based techniques have not been developed for conveniently storing, viewing and manipulating a facsimile as an image from an accessible storage location across different computing platforms. Therefore, it may be desirable to provide systems and methods for using a facsimile transmission and an imaging system unique to a user to meet various document handling needs.